Harvard University's Houghton Library usually buzzes with scholars engaged in research, but on the day before Christmas Eve the space exuded a more relaxed atmosphere. A forthcoming story and its swiftly approaching deadline occasioned my visit, and it turned out that the half-day before the library closed for a weeklong winter break yielded more time with librarians who might otherwise be engaged in bibliocentric endeavors.


As it was, librarian Susan Halpert, a three-decade veteran of the Houghton, graciously explained the finer points of wrangling Harvard's vast books and manuscripts database, then whisked us through the Emily Dickinson Room, the John Keats Room, and the recently completed Hyde suite, which houses what is perhaps the finest collection of Samuel Johnson material outside the U.K. Until recently, the Hyde suite was reserved for non-academic purposes, but now roughly 250 different courses utilize the resources here throughout the semester. 


In an effort to welcome more students to the library, the Houghton launched a summer fellowship program in 2015 specifically aimed at undergraduate students. Fellowship participants receive a stipend of $2,850 and participate in an exploratory, ten-week research opportunity that encourages academic inquiry while also alleviating some of the intimidation inherent in facing the sheer breadth and scope of Harvard's holdings.The results have been impressive; one of last year's fellows, current senior Jess Clay, used the Houghton's collection of drawings and papers by John James Audubon to explore the naturalist's role in American Romanticism, and also compared Audubon's drawings to poems by Emily Dickinson and fables by Jean de la Fontaine. Clay's efforts resulted in an exhibition entitled, Sublime and Manifest: The American Romanticism of John James Audubon, on display in the Keats Room at the Houghton through February 2017.

                                                                                                                                                            

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                                                                                                                                                 The tour of the Houghton's inner sanctum concluded at noon, and it was time for the library to shutter its doors. By 12:01, not a creature was stirring.

 

Flyer for undergraduate presentation at Harvard. Image Credit: Barbara Richter

 

 

207569_0.jpgThe stock of longtime antiquarian bookseller Edwin V. Glaser is being offered at PBA Galleries in a January 12 sale. Glaser specialized in rare medicine, science, and technology books. Online bidding has opened.


Glaser began selling books in New York City in the 1960s, before relocating to Sausalito, and then Napa, California, in turn. He served as president of the ABAA (1986-1988) and as an original faculty member of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminars (1979-2010). Glaser decided to sell his stock at PBA Galleries as he approached his late 80s and withdrew from "active participation" in the antiquarian book trade.  


In a statement, he commented, "I have met and had the opportunity to know many remarkable people: my fellow dealers, my customers, librarians, academics, and just plain (actually not so plain) book-lovers and assorted eccentrics. I acquired and had the opportunity to handle and sell some of the great written monuments of the world's history and culture. I was my own boss and came and went as I pleased. I even managed to support my family and occasionally have a few dollars left over (although there was always another book or collection to buy)."


Auction highlights include a rare sixteenth-century Paracelsus text (pictured) and a letter from Italian mathematician and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi.


Image Courtesy of PBA Galleries

 





Richard_Adams_WatershipDown.jpgEnglish author Richard Adams has died at the age of 96. He was best known for Watership Down, a novel about a band of rabbits seeking a new warren that was originally published by Rex Collins in London in 1972, and then by Macmillan in New York. It was a runaway bestseller in both countries, launching the writing career of a civil servant who was already in his fifties. Watership Down also won the prestigious Carnegie Medal.

The news of his passing called to mind a passage from editor Michael Korda's memoir, Another Life. Korda wrote of Adams, "He was at once a serious adult, carrying a heavy load of religious and moral baggage, and a wondering child, able to imagine a whole rich world in a country hedgerow full of rabbits."

Korda acquired Adams' second book, Shardik (1974), about a bear, for Simon & Schuster. Although he felt the novel lacked the magic of Watership, it was his pitch to the publisher's sales force that really sunk the book when one of the reps offered this opinion to a conference room of colleagues: "Comme ci, comme ça." It was the kiss of death--or perhaps just a classic case of 'Second Book Syndrome.'  

Adams did go on to write many more books. And his legacy will not go gently: A remake of the (notoriously violent) 1978 Watership Down film is in production via Netflix and the BBC and is slated to premiere in 2017.

Image: First edition (UK) of Watership Down via Wikipedia

catherinedickensportrait.jpgThe Charles Dickens Museum in London reported that it discovered an original portrait of Catherine Dickens, wife of Charles Dickens. In a curious twist, the painting was discovered by X-ray beneath the portrait many believed to be the original. As it turns out, the original painting was extensively overpainted, perhaps after a botched attempt to clean it.


The Museum was gifted the portrait in 1996 and has it treasured it for 20 years as one of only two paintings of Catherine in the museum's collection. In May of 2016, however, some gaps in the painting's provenance were discovered, raising concerns about its authenticity. During cataloging of the museum's art holdings, concerns were raised about the way the paint was handled in some places, which seemed amateur. The original painter, Daniel Maclise, was unlikely to have painted in such a manner.


Further investigation revealed that about 70% of the painting was not original and had been overpainted. The painting was scanned with infrared and a single X-ray in September, where the original Maclise portrait beneath was discovered.


"This has been an interesting process to say the least and one that has seen us swinging from dismay to elation," said Cindy Sughrue, director of the Charles Dickens Museum, in a statement. "It is also a reminder of the fascination involved with being responsible for such extensive collections and the importance of ongoing research into those collections. Our next move will be to raise the necessary funds to enable a complete renovation of the painting, to reveal the original Maclise work of Catherine for display in her home."


 Image from Charles Dickens Museum





In case you've been too busy getting last-minute holiday errands done, here's what you missed in the world of books this week:                                                                                                                                                        

Publishers Weekly says that book sales are lackluster this holiday season.                                                                                                                                                          

The Daily News reports that Brooklyn's Morbid Anatomy Museum closed this week after roughly two and a half years in existence. (Check out our story on the space in the Spring 2014 print issue.)

                                                                                                                                                                                   

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image source: Wikimedia Commons                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Hyperallergic's Claire Voon chronicles the preservation and recent restoration of medieval wall murals at Stratford-Upon-Avon thanks in part to William Shakespeare's father.                       

Clare Ansberry at the Wall Street Journal explores the origins of the holiday carol "Winter Wonderland."

                                                                                                                                                 

Happy holidays! 

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Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. public domain

L15317_500_5.jpgWren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge has received an "extraordinary" bequest from Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe. The duchess, who died in 2014 at age 99, left over 7,500 books to the library including first editions of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. The bequest is one of the largest received in the library's history.


Trinity's librarian, Dr. Nicolas Bell, said in a statement it was "an extraordinary library - one of the most important private collections in Britain, which offers untold discoveries."


Those untold discoveries include previously unknown manuscripts of Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington, Florence Nightingale, and Charles Dickens.


The book collection was primarily formed by Mary's father, Robert Crewe-Milnes, and her grandfather, Richard Monckton Milnes, a Liberal Victorian politician.


Dr. Bell continued: "Richard Monckton Milnes was a fastidious collector of unusual books. As well as major works of English and French literature, his library included transcripts of notorious trials for murder, forgery and witchcraft, rare political pamphlets on the French Revolution and the American Civil War, and several shelves of unpublished literary manuscripts."


Some highlights from the collection are already on display at Wren Library during regular opening hours.


Image via Trinity College.







I think it's fair to say that all of us behind the scenes at Fine Books are book lovers and compulsive readers. So I reached out to our staffers and asked them to recommend their favorite book this year. The results were wonderfully heterogeneous: fiction, non-fiction, topical, bookish, historical, riveting. So if you're looking for a good read over the holiday break, check out our "Best of 2016."

9781524721725.jpgColumnist Nicholas Basbanes: Robert Gottlieb's Avid Reader (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28), a memoir by one of the great literary editors of our time.

Publisher Webb Howell: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight (Scribner, $29). Webb said, "This uniquely American story includes the drama of a Greek tragedy but with a happy ending. It says much about where we've been the past thirty or so years and what we've come to value. NIKE is more than a shoe company; it manages the sports figures who entertain us, who give countless people the extra nudge to 'just do it.'"

Columnist Jeremy Dibbell: Ben Winters' Underground Airlines (Mulholland Books, $26), a novel set in an alternate America where the Civil War never happened. Jeremy wrote on his blog, "Winters' tale is chock full of slightly-twisted historical threads--like any good counterfactual, it explores what might easily have been had things gone just a bit differently. It's uncomfortable, chilling, heartbreaking ... and it deserves a wide audience."

Associate Publisher Kimberly Draper: The Girls by Emma Cline (Random House, $27), a novel about a teenage girl that ends up joining a Manson Family-style cult.

Writer Barbara Basbanes Richter: Chanson douce (Gallimard, ??18), a psychological thriller based on true events that opens with the murder of two children at the hands of their beloved 'nounou' (nanny), written by Franco-Moroccan ex-journalist Leïla Slimani. Barbara said, "I inhaled it in two nights--I could do nothing else but finish the book." The book won the 2016 Prix Goncourt, and it is reported that Faber acquired the English translation rights.

Madness.jpgColumnist Jeffrey Murray: Revolution (W. W. Norton, $75) by map collector Richard H. Brown and dealer Paul Cohen (of Cohen & Taliaferro). Said Murray, "I found it an aesthetically wonderful presentation of the cartographic heritage behind the American Revolutionary War."

As for me: Mike Jay's This Way Madness Lies (Thames & Hudson, $45), a fascinating and unsparing illustrated history of mental illness, from eighteenth-century madhouses to nineteenth-century lunatic asylums to twentieth-century mental hospitals. The book complements the still-current Wellcome Collection exhibition, Bedlam: the asylum and beyond.

Images courtesy of FS&G (top); Thames & Hudson (bottom).

134193_couverture_Hres_0.jpgFrench publisher Le Seuil has threatened legal action against the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam after the Museum questioned the authenticity of a series of previously unpublished Van Gogh sketches. The sketches were recently published by Le Seuil in the book "Vincent Van Gogh, the fog of Arles: the rediscovered sketchbook."


The book purports to contain a series of previously unknown sketches conducted by Van Gogh during his time in Arles, discovered in the accounts book of a hotel Van Gogh stayed at in 1888. The text was written by art historian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, the main expert behind the find, who specializes in Van Gogh, and teaches at the University of Toronto.


After the book was published last month, the staff of the Van Gogh Museum rejected the sketches as mere copies of Van Gogh's style, referring to them as "clumsy" and "monotonous."


In response, La Seuil, as well as the owner of the sketches, are threatening legal action. In a press statement, La Seuil said they intend "to obtain compensation for the damage they have suffered as a result of an insidious and unfounded campaign" on the part of the Van Gogh Museum. 


For its part, the Van Gogh Museum has said it is not interested in engaging in a public debate about the authenticity of the sketches and instead are calling on the publisher and author to provide a clear response to all of the issues its experts raised about the work.


 Image via the publisher






If you're like me, you have a go-to font when you open your word processor. You scroll through the options, but unless you're designing something special like an invitation or a flyer, you click on your old standard, selected for readability and aesthetic gratification. (For me, the choice is Cambria.) Of course there are dozens of alternatives, perhaps even hundreds if you've purchased extras, most unused and unappreciated. Until now.   

Type Is.jpgType is Beautiful: The Story of Fifty Remarkable Fonts, recently published by the Bodleian Library and distributed in the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press, offers an excellent introduction to type design. Author Simon Loxley lists fifty fonts not as a "best of" but to showcase those with intriguing histories, cultural significance, or uncommon beauty, and he employs a historical approach, beginning with Gutenberg's Bible Type, c. 1454, and ending with Zulia, a script face developed in 2013 by Jose Luis Joluvian. The usual suspects, like Bodoni, Helvetica, and Doves Type are here, but so are Comic Sans, London Underground, and Data 70. Each short chapter is usefully illustrated with a clear example of the typeface.

                                                                                         

Some fun facts learned:

                                                                                             

  • The first commercially available sans-serif typeface was called Two Lines English Egyptian, which appeared in the Caslon foundry's 1816 type specimen;
  • The typeface most commonly associated with the 'Wild West'--e.g. Wanted! posters--was originally called French Antique, developed in the foundry of Englishman Robert Besley c. 1854;
  • A novelty typeface called Bloody Hell was created in Britain in the mid-1970s. Its letters "appear to be melting, or dripping with blood."

Loxley's take on type through the centuries is exceptionally engaging, and one that might even entice readers to try a new font or two.

Image Courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.

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Coconut cake at the Emily Dickinson Museum. Photo Credit: Nicholas A. Basbanes 

 

On Saturday December 10 the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, celebrated what would have been its namesake's 186th birthday with cake, guided tours, and of course, poetry readings. Last year the museum welcomed visitors to partake in crowdsourced poetry creation and to tour the recently completed renovation of Dickinson's bedroom.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Roughly 260 visitors braved bitter temperatures to attend this year's bash, which coincided with the restoration of the property's conservatory. Built by the Dickinson patriarch Edward in 1855, the tiny, south-facing, six-foot by 17-foot glass-enclosed greenhouse served as a year-round link to the natural world so beloved by Emily, where she tended to nearly two dozen native and exotic plants like orchids, ferns, carnations, and gardenias.                       

Dickinson's interest in plants was far from casual; consider her Herbarium, a collection of over 400 plants she collected, pressed, and identified by their Latin names while a precocious fourteen-year old student at Amherst Academy. A facsimile of the impressive volume is at the museum, while Harvard's Houghton Library houses the original. (The entire book has been digitized and is accessible online.) 


The conservatory was dismantled in 1916, but many of the original building materials remained on the property, undisturbed, for one hundred years. Now, the museum plans to use those existing pieces to rebuild the greenhouse as accurately as possible, as well as replant the various flowers that both inspired the poet and, as she grew more reclusive, served as her representatives to the outside world.


"The restoration of the conservatory is still a work in progress," said Brooke Steinhauser, the museum's program director. "We've got another month before completion--but there's a roof and a floor, and already you get a feel for the size of the space and how important this room was to this poet who was a gardener at heart."


Throughout the afternoon, volunteers invited children and adults to fill miniature pots with marigold or foxglove seeds from the garden. At 2:30 p.m. sharp a crowd assembled on the main floor around a table supporting two massive coconut cakes prepared according to a recipe sent to the poet by a woman known as Mrs. Carmichael. (Find the recipe here and in Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as a Cook.) Taste-testers agreed that the confection was appropriately sweet and dense--a pleasing remedy to wintery doldrums and a lovely tribute to a woman who distilled "amazing sense From Ordinary Meanings."

 

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The poet's bedroom reproduced to appear as it did when Dickinson inhabited it. Photo: Nicholas A. Basbanes

 

The Emily Dickinson Museum closes later this month for the rest of the winter and will reopen in March.